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This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 63:

= Booker Brown, USC football
= Joe Carollo, Los Angeles Rams
= Jim Brown, UCLA football

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 63:

= Mike McDonald, Los Angeles Rams
= Greg Horton, Los Angeles Rams
= Corey Linsley, Los Angeles Chargers

The most interesting story for No. 63:
Jim Brown, UCLA football offensive lineman via L.A. Loyola High (1954 to 1955)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles, Westwood, Glendale

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Jim Brown helped make history, perhaps by accident, or by good fortune, as part of UCLA’s most unique 1954 national championship football team.

Decades later, Brown tackled an idea on how to preserve the team’s history, for the good fortune of those who came decades later.

A 6-foot, 204-pound right guard on an explosive line that paved the way for coach Red Sanders’ Single-Wing offense, Brown capped off a two-year run with the Bruins as an All-American in 1955. The teams he was on during his time went 18-2 and won two Pacific Coast Conference titles.

Sanders once referred to Brown as “one of the best football players we have had at UCLA. He has never played a poor game. As an all-around guard, he doesn’t back up from anyone. I haven’t seen anyone whip him yet across the scrimmage line. … In addition, you’ve never heard (Brown) complain or alibi or explain. He just goes out and gives his team the best he has.”

When Brown was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001, it was noted that he also played rugby for the Bruins and was part of its ROTC program. Instead of signing with the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals, who drafted him in 1956, Brown went to the U.S. Army and became commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.

When Brown died at his home in Glendale in 2022 at age 87, survived by his wife of 66 years, Merrilyn, who was a UCLA song girl when they married in 1956, he took pride in having five children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Brown left not just his own life story, but those of his teammates from that Bruin era.

Continue reading “No. 63: Jim Brown” →

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 59:

= Evan Phillips, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Ismail Valdez, Los Angeles Dodgers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 59:

= Mario Celotto, USC football
= Loek Van Mil, Los Angeles Angels

The most interesting stories for No. 59:
Collin Ashton, USC football linebacker (2002 to 2005)
Lou Ferrigno Jr., USC football linebacker (2006 to 2007)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Mission Viejo, Sherman Oaks, Hollywood, Los Angeles (Coliseum)

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Walk in the cleats of a college football walk-on.

It’s a fantasy football experience. Sometimes. Pay to play can be an expensive fantasy.

Some get movies made about them. Their “true underdog” experience.” At least one ended up being known as the “O-Dog.” He got wrapped up in nefarious escapades that were somehow worthy of a video screaming docuseries.

Two pendulum swing of the walk-on experiment from USC’s annals happened during the Pete Carroll Era of fame and fortune in the 2000s. Both were given No. 59:

= Collin Ashton, a kid from Mission Viejo who never missed a Trojans football since the day he was born, had four generations before him attend the school, and was just hoping he could be used a long-snapper. He ended up starting a few games at linebacker as a senior because they needed healthy bodies. All the way to a national title game.

= Lou Ferrigno Jr., the son of a Hollywood star/acclaimed body builder, knew his DNA alone wouldn’t be enough to get him a shot. He came, he tried, he got injured. He begrudgingly got into acting. He made a career out of that.

If a walk-on can act if he/she belongs, that’s half the battle.  

Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. Sometimes, it’s just worth taking a shot. If not for a teachable moment, it’s a fabulous barroom conversation of those glory days decades later.

Continue reading “No. 59: Collin Ashton and Lou Ferrigno Jr.” →

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 56:

= Jarrod Washburn, Anaheim Angels/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
= Doug Smith, Los Angeles Rams

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 56:

= Hong-Chih Kuo, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Pedro Astacio, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Kole Calhoun, Los Angeles Angels
= Dennis Johnson, USC football
= Morgan Fox, Los Angeles Chargers

The most interesting story for No. 56:
Gary Zimmerman, Los Angeles Express (1984 to 1985)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Fullerton, Walnut, Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles (Coliseum)

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Gary Zimmerman had Steve Young’s back.

And in the 1980s, as a right tackle on the offensive line protecting a very mobile and ultra-valuable left-handed scrambling quarterback, that’s what blind-side mattered most for the insatiable Los Angeles Express of the equally mercenary United States Football League.

The Express gave soldier-of-fortune Zimmerman an X-factor platform to show his talents. It was career move that would reward the Fullerton-born, Walnut High standout who just finished a sparkling career at the University of Oregon with a chance, on paper, to earn millions while he figured out his life’s true ambitions.

There was risk to the reward — unnecessary injury, professional ridicule, growing-pain drama. But the fact Zimmerman ended up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame with a bronze bust after all was done gives that USFL/Express experience an exclamation point.

That crazy spring league wasn’t a bust for him.                                           

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The United States Football League had a name that seemed to demand a sense of duty to country and capitalism for any able-body college player wanting to serve a greater purpose. Specifically in the calendar months between Presidents Day and the Fourth of July — and you gotta work on Easter Sunday.

The Express was one of its original dozen teams to capitalize on this opportunity when the USFL sprung up as a spring league in 1983. It would go away ingloriously in 1985, buried in court documents.

The USFL, in the end, may have seemed to be a few vowels short of being really useful. But it actually was for guys like Zimmerman.

Continue reading “No. 56: Gary Zimmerman” →

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 46:

= Burt Hooten: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Todd Christensen: Los Angeles Raiders

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 46:

= Don Aase: California Angels
= Dan Petry: California Angels

The most interesting story for No. 46:
Juan Marichal, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1975)

Southern California map pinpoints:
Dodger Stadium

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Juan Marichal’s matriarchal Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown seems to have one dandy of a typo.

After all he accomplished for the San Francisco Giants in a 16-year MLB life, the last line of his career ledger reads: “Los Angeles N.L., 1975”

It’s because that actually happened.

What a kicker to a spiteful spit take.

When The Associated Press posted a story prior to the 1975 season, explaining how the nastiest of the rival Giants had accepted a one-year, $60,000 contract with the intent of actually trying to help the Dodgers win games, the lede read: “Baseball, like politics, apparently makes strange bedfellows.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray launched into a column a week later: “There’s a new game in town today. It begins, ‘Juan Marichal, playing for the Dodgers, is like …’ And you supply your own punch line.” Murray’s suggestions: “King Faisal at a bar mitzvah … like Brezhnev at a White House prayer meeting … In the view of most Dodger fans, Juan Marichal belongs in the Nuremberg trials, not in Dodger Blue.”

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, columnist Bud Tucker lamented: “It wouldn’t matter if the guy could win 25 games. Adolph Hitler is Adolph Hitler and Juan Marichal is Juan Marichal.”

A month earlier, Herald-Examiner columnist Melvin Durslag had written: “If all the Dodger hitters that Marichal has put in the dirt were laid end-to-end, they would stretch from Chavez Ravine to Santo Domingo.”

Marichal’s decades-long existence as L.A.’s Public Enemy No. 1 all goes back to one of the most abhorrent incidents in the Dodgers-Giants historic and on-going rivalry.

A now hard-to-find book published in 1964 about the history of this series by Lee Allen called “The Giants & The Dodgers: The Fabulous Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud” a cover illustration shows a Brooklyn Bum going after a Giant with a baseball bat. Marichal flipped that script, and was forever linked with John Roseboro, the Dodgers’ catcher, during a game at Candlestick Park in 1965. There is far more context and social significance to what happened that day.

Somehow, Marichal and Roseboro turned it into a story of forgiveness, friendship and the foundation of what sports can do to heal all wounds.

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Continue reading “No. 46: Juan Marichal (with John Roseboro)” →